Charter management for 1 to 5 boats, from message to payment

You have two motor yachts in a harbor on the Cyclades. In June it still works: the bookings are on your phone, the payments are in the bank app, and the calendar is in your head. By mid-July your skipper asks which boat goes out at nine, a guest wants to know if the down payment came in, and the hotel down the road just sold the same Saturday you promised someone on WhatsApp.

This article follows one charter from the first message to the deposit back, and shows where a small charter company loses time and money on the way.

One calendar for every boat and every channel

A double booking in August costs you a guest and a review. It happens when bookings live in more than one place: your WhatsApp, a marketplace, the hotel desk, a notebook.

So put every booking in one calendar, whoever sold it:

• Guests who book on your website land in it on their own.
• Hotels and villa managers book through a link of their own, at their own rate.
• Bookings you take by phone or on WhatsApp you enter yourself, and you put a partner’s name on them when a partner sent the guest.
• Bookings from a marketplace you enter too, so your own form and your partners can’t sell the boat again. Switch off the customer emails on those bookings, and block the day on the marketplace when you sell it yourself.

In the planning of Let’s Book you see every boat and every trip on one timeline, hour by hour.

The message becomes a booking the same day

A guest writes: Saturday, eight people, the full day. Answer with a booking, not only a price. Take the booking in Let’s Book, and the confirmation goes out with a payment link and the date the money is due. Or send a pre-filled link that opens the booking form with the boat and the date already chosen.

When you take the booking yourself, the Saturday is on the calendar the moment you agree, so the next guest who asks for it gets an honest answer. If the guest doesn’t pay on time, the Saturday stays booked until you cancel the booking.

Down payment now, the rest later

Take part of the price when they book, and the rest before the trip. A payment link goes out by email or text, or you copy it into the WhatsApp chat yourself. A payment by bank transfer or in cash is registered on the booking, so you always see what’s still open.

A booking that needs someone to look at it gets a flag, so it doesn’t get lost between two trips.

The contract and the details before the day

You link your terms per language, so a guest reads them in their own. Guests sign the rental contract digitally at home, through our WaiverForever integration, on your own WaiverForever account. And you ask what you want to know at checkout: allergies, a birthday on board, the hotel to pick them up from. The answers are on the booking.

The galley and the crew the day before

Let’s Book doesn’t plan your crew’s shifts. What it gives you is the day on one screen: which boat leaves when, for how long, and for how many guests. The add-on order list tells the galley what was ordered for each trip, from lunch for eight to a bottle of champagne at sunset, and you print it as a picking list.

When the wind picks up

In the Aegean the meltemi can close a sea you sailed that morning. Move the booking to another day, and the guest gets an email that shows what changed. When there is no other day, you settle the cancellation from the booking: with your cancellation fee kept back, or with everything refunded, as your terms say. Our article on pricing a day charter shows how to write that policy before the season.

After the trip

The security deposit goes back from the booking. If something needs repairing, you keep part of it back, with every withholding on its own line. So on the dock you can show the guest exactly what you keep and why. The next day a follow-up email asks for a review, and fifty weeks after the trip a win-back email invites the guest back.

What a small charter needs in July

What you need in July	In Let’s Book
One calendar for every boat and every channel	The planning, with partner and phone bookings in it
Guests who book and pay at eleven at night	The booking form on your own site, in ten languages, Greek included
The down payment in, the balance before the trip	Payment links with a due date, by email, text or copied into a chat
A contract signed before they arrive	Digital rental contracts through WaiverForever
The galley knows what to load	The add-on order list
The security deposit back, each withholding listed	Returned from the booking, withholdings line by line

A crewed yacht by the week, sold mainly through brokers, asks for more than this: charter agreements, provisioning lists, owner statements. A booking of a few days or a week still goes in the same calendar, even when a broker sold it. If most of your season is day trips and short charters that you’d like to sell yourself, the list above is what gets you through July.

Read how to get more direct bookings for your yacht charter, and see what Let’s Book does for boat charters and yacht rental.